AirPort Express & Apple TV

macrumors newbie

I have my Mac, wireless internet, an AirPort Express & Apple TV. I have speakers plugged into my AirPort Express and I have my Apple TV set up. I want to be able to play music through my Airport Express & Apple TV at the same time, but I can only do 1 or the other. So if I listen to Apple TV I choose my normal internet connection on my computer or if I want to listen to my Airport Express speakers I choose 'AirPort Express' from my internet connection. What I have I done wrong? HELP?? Oh and my AirPort Express light flashes orange which means something is up.

macrumors newbie

This doesn't work for me. I can play music to multiple speakers when playing from iTunes, but when playing from the apple tv, I can only switch between the two. I've tried it with my airport express as an extension of my network and by joining my network. It's not really a big deal for me. More like a feature I wish AppleTV had.

macrumors 6502

This doesn't work for me. I can play music to multiple speakers when playing from iTunes, but when playing from the apple tv, I can only switch between the two. I've tried it with my airport express as an extension of my network and by joining my network. It's not really a big deal for me. More like a feature I wish AppleTV had.

Click to expand...

Your Mac can stream to multiple devices through iTunes, but iOS devices and the Apple TV can only play to one device at a time, unfortunately.

macrumors 6502a

Your Mac can stream to multiple devices through iTunes, but iOS devices and the Apple TV can only play to one device at a time, unfortunately.

Click to expand...

You can work around the problem with the third party apps AirFoil and AirFoil Speakers. (www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil) Launching Airfoil Speakers on your Mac will allow you to select your Mac as an AirPlay speaker from an iOS device. If you also launch Airfoil, you can then redirect the stream going to you Mac to multiple other AirPlay devices.

I've been using these apps recently to run Spotify on my iPhone and redirect the output to my Apple TV 1, and thus to my stereo system. It works very well.

macrumors 68040

they need to fix this. THere's no reason why iOS can't do this. OSX can and it's not a resource thing (I don't think). After all, it's the end device that does the work.

note:

(BTW, I just tested this setup in iTunes OSX with three Airplay devices. It's really something. There's no limit as to how many devices you can hook up apparently. There's nothing like listening to something coming from the entire house. Also, the controls are really nice, as you can adjust the volumes of each device separately as well as selecting-deselecting them in a single control panel. Sure a setup like this can be done with regular equipment, but this is just soooo easy. I never thought of it really but I have a B&W A5, which is great but small, so I thought WTF, i'll run a sub off an Airport Express in another room. This worked rather nicely so I added stuff from there. No effort at all. Amazing.)

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